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Union Chancellor candidate Laschet
Photo: Tobias Schwarz / AFP
He did it.
Once again.
With his one pony trick, you can also call it his political recipe for success: persevere, keep your nerve.
Armin Laschet, 60, first became Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, then CDU boss - and now candidate for Union Chancellor.
Never before has anyone entered a Bundestag election campaign for the C sister parties so disheveled and disheveled.
It is indicative that the decisive vote for Laschet on Tuesday night in the CDU federal executive committee almost failed due to technical problems.
In the end, almost a quarter of the members voted against him and six abstained.
For now it doesn't matter.
Laschet did it.
"We didn't make it easy for ourselves," he said in the afternoon at the CDU headquarters.
Probably true.
The decisive factor was that Laschet's opponent Markus Söder accepted the federal board's vote from the previous evening.
The CSU boss and Bavarian Prime Minister cleared the way for the CDU chairman at noon.
"The die has been cast, Armin Laschet is the Union's candidate for chancellor," said Söder at a press appearance in Munich.
This is also indicative: Söder, the defeated, proclaims Laschet the winner.
But that is also part of Laschet's recipe for success: when in doubt, put your own vanity aside if it benefits him.
That Söder leaves the impression during his appearance that he continues to consider himself the better candidate - given from the point of view of the CDU boss.
The result counts for him: He will apply for the successor to Angela Merkel in the Chancellery for the Union parties and not Söder, "the candidate of hearts" according to CSU General Secretary Markus Blume.
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CSU boss Söder at the withdrawal press conference
Photo: Peter Kneffel / dpa
Söder's withdrawal statement in the CSU party headquarters in the north of Munich is historically short: it only takes three minutes.
"My word that I have given is valid," says Söder.
He and the CSU had made an offer, "we would have been ready to serve our country and we received an incredible amount of support for this offer."
Söder thanks the local and district associations of the CSU, the "young and modern who were looking for the future" and above all the "courageous MPs" who would have said what they think "past the usual party solidarity".
The Bavarian head of government does not forget to thank "almost all of the prime ministers for their support."
In other words: Above all, he remembers his supporters from the CDU.
And that's exactly where Laschet's problem lies: Although the K question has been resolved, the deep rifts between the CDU and CSU will not be filled in any time soon and have now been opened again.
Even if Laschet praised the Bavarian sister party beyond measure, conjured the unity of the Union and emphasized the close cooperation with Söder.
The trenches that have emerged within the CDU are even more problematic.
At the grassroots, in the federal states, in the federal government: parts of Laschet's own party had recently spoken out in favor of Söder - and stabbed their chairman in the back.
The CSU boss has many fans, especially in the parliamentary group.
Dozens of them urged to the very end that the candidate question should be clarified, if necessary, by a vote of the MPs.
Misjudgment of the Söder fans
Until shortly before the decisive board meeting on Monday evening, Laschet's opponents of the CDU assumed that they had already exerted sufficient pressure on their chairman.
Laschet could only throw it down, hand over the candidacy to Söder in a face-saving act, that was the calculation.
But it turned out differently.
Now the frustration is huge in parts of the CDU Söder camp.
There was talk of the first party resignations on Tuesday morning, Laschet ignored the will of the base and simply pushed through his candidacy, it is said.
However, some prominent Söder supporters from the CDU, such as Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier, are already calling on people to support Laschet.
After the decision, there is a mixture of horror and speechlessness in the CSU.
Bavaria's Finance Minister Albert Füracker, who would have been one of the aspirants to succeed him at the head of the Free State in the event of Söder's move to Berlin, believes the CDU leadership's decision to vote against its own party base: "Five months before the federal election" that is "very remarkable".
Outraged reactions from the CSU
Silke Launert, member of the Bundestag from Bayreuth and member of the CSU executive committee, is outraged: "That our sister party apparently prefers to go into the opposition rather than let a Bavarian take precedence in the candidacy for chancellor" stunned her.
“Anyone who ignores the vote of the grassroots in order to hold on to their own candidate for chancellor” is “undemocratic”, says Launert.
What she hears from the grassroots doesn't sound good for the joint chancellor candidate Laschet: Quite a few emails have been received from members of her constituency, one speaks of an "attack on the grassroots", of "demotivation" and "arrogance of the CDU" .
Various CSU local chairmen, Launert reports, had announced to her that they would not campaign for Laschet.
But even in the CSU, some are already looking ahead: "Together and as one, we will convince people that the CDU and CSU have the best ideas for the future," says Manfred Weber.
The chairman of the EPP group in the European Parliament had to deal with a severe setback after the European elections when it was not him but Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) who became EU Commission President.
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CDU boss Laschet at press conference after the Söder withdrawal
Photo: Sean Gallup / Getty Images
Armin Laschet now wants to vigorously advance as a candidate for Union Chancellor and "switch to election campaign mode," as the CDU says, the party headquarters are well positioned.
The latter may be, in fact, Secretary General Paul Ziemiak has already initiated a lot in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus in the past few weeks, and he has also built up a close relationship with CSU colleague Blume.
But where is Laschet's strength supposed to come from?
He more or less squeezed the decisive vote from the night out of the federal executive board - otherwise, that should have been clear to most, the party would have been able to look for a new chairman.
And yet, in the six and a half hours until the final vote, there were so many who told him - virtually - in his face that they prefer CSU boss Söder as a candidate for chancellor, some of them were not entitled to vote: nevertheless, in the end, nine federal board members voted against him.
The fact that Laschet praised the distrust expressed towards him on Tuesday as an expression of particular transparency is therefore an interesting reinterpretation.
Above all, his lack of popularity was also accused from within his own ranks.
Laschet's polls are actually underground - in contrast to Söder's, all sorts of model calculations have therefore been opened in recent days with a view to the general election.
Then there are also the strong Greens, who have just quietly nominated Annalena Baerbock as candidate for Chancellor.
And also SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz should not be underestimated, believes some in the Union.
They now want to "take the base with them," it says from the Adenauer house, and Laschet wants to talk to her as much as possible in the coming weeks and seek trust.
But that won't be enough to be a successful candidate for chancellor.
For this Laschet needs a colossal image boost in the population, he has to turn the mood.
"Armin Laschet stands for trust, experience and the idea of a decade of modernization," says the CDU.
Perhaps, but for the citizens to notice that, he is running out of time - especially since Laschet, as NRW Prime Minister, still has to get the most populous German state through the pandemic.
Markus Söder has to do that in Bavaria too.
But now he has time to focus on that.